myJaxon

Ian’s first Halloween is almost here and he has already gone trick or treating! Yes I have dressed Ian up this year. He’s going to wait one more year before going trick or treating with his father around the neighborhood, but we just had to go to the grandparents. We have to say thank you to Aunt Trish for making his adorable costume. Ian went as Pippin from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Ian wasn’t alone in this getup either. Ian and Chris were in it together as hobbits. They were so adorable in their costumes. Trish even made the eleven capes. The whole ensemble came out beautifully and I can’t believe that my little man actually looks good in a tunic. Ian will be able to wear it one more time when we go to Jesse’s work Halloween party.

These are the original outfits for Ian and CJ’s costume:

I’m trying to decide if I should host a Pampered Chef party.  I’ve heard they are a lot of fun and I’ve never been able to get to one.  So my chief concern is that no one would show up.  It’s a legitimate concern.  Most everyone I would invite doesn’t live near me, so I don’t know if they would make the 2 hour drive or not.   So I thought I would ask….I’m thinking of having a party sometime in January or February….would you be interested in coming?

Jesse and I are starting a new venture together. Some of you may or may not know that I have a huge cookbook online. Well, I do. All of the recipes are ones we either like or have been given to me by someone. It had come to my attention that a lot of people use it. More than I thought did at least. Jesse gives it out at work a lot. Of course, this may be due to all the food I send in with him. I like to cook. I like to try new recipes. What I don’t like to do is make a four serving meal and have leftovers that never get ate. So I like to find guinea pigs and I’ve found that the best ones tend to be geeks or co-workers.   Each time Jesse has taken in something, someone always asks for the recipe, so he gives them my cookbook address.  It’s handy. Well, this last time, one of his co-workers wanted to leave a comment and they were talking and the next thing I knew, opensourcecook.com was conceptualized.

Basically, Jesse is going to help me completely revamp the look and interaction of my cookbook. It’s going to get a newer and cleaner design (I hope), a place where people can submit variations to recipes as well as comments, rate their favorite recipes, etc. I will tell you this, it’s going to take a long time to do. We just don’t have a lot of time to devote to it right now (three weddings and a 7 month old who is crawling means we’re sorta busy). However, I’m hoping to have it up and running by the first of the new year, but something tells me that is wishful thinking.

If you’re interested in knowing what we’re thinking of doing or would like to make any suggestions, check out our planning page at Jesse’s wiki. Once we stat to seriously work on it, we’ll put up a development page so we can report our progress.

I have to make some decisions. I really can’t put them off any longer. One of them is something I’ve been attempting to do for years with no real success and that needs to change. The other was going to happen eventually, it’s just occurring sooner than I had planned. Regardless of how these came about, I need to stick by the decisions I’m going to make and that’s going to be really hard.

I need to lose weight. It’s not an option any more. I’m tired of being big and clunky. I’m ready to go shopping and be able to put something on and not think “not in this lifetime”. I’ve made some half-assed attempts in the past, but I really need to do it this time. I want to be where I was going into college. That means I have to lose close to 50lbs and that is not going to be easy. I’ve wanted to try Weight Watchers, and if it was cheaper or we had the money, I would be signing up tonight. Unfortunately, that isn’t an option right now, but I’m hoping to try it sometime this fall. For now, I’ll start with the basics. No more pasta. No more pop. No more sweets (except ice cream). It’s going to be hard. Especially the pasta. It’s an easy and easy meal and we always have it in the apartment. That’s going to change. Besides, pasta makes me tired anyway and it takes away any drive I have going that day. I’ve given up pop before and I can do it again. Sweets is going to be a little harder since Jesse has such a sweet tooth (especially at the moment). I’m not giving up ice cream because I’ll need something sweet and I can get that fat-free and it’ll still taste somewhat good. Plus, I love my Popsicles, as does Ian. Exercising is going to be hard. I have a couple of the Billy Blanks Bootcamp DVDs here and I should do them, but I always feel like an idiot doing aerobics by myself. I would walk, but I’m not comfortable doing that around here. At least not by myself with Ian. We have the Clinton River Trail running behind the complex and there is another one going through the nature reserve we’re next to, but neither are in a well-lit area or a well-traveled area. It creeps me out too much. So this decision has been made….I’m going on a diet and I’m sticking with it. It’s going to take a lot of will power that I don’t have, but I’m hoping that everyone will be supportive and help me keep at it.

Most mothers who breastfeed generally go into their infant bites them. I always thought that meant with teeth, but I’m beginning to realize that isn’t true. Ian doesn’t have any teeth yet, but he has some tough gums. It’s a natural reaction considering he’s on solid foods now, but he’s starting to bite more and my supply is going down anyway. I think it’s time to end the nursing. I wasn’t ready to stop just yet, but I’ve talked with the Ped’s office and they said that most mothers go about 6 months. I was hoping to go closer to 8-9 months, but what can I do. Plus, I’m fertile again and neither of us are ready for another kid. I think we would both lose it if I ended up pregnant. We want time to enjoy watching Ian grow without having to worry about another kid. The only way to ensure we don’t get pregnant is for me to go back on the pill and I can’t do that while I’m nursing. This is a tough decision, but Jesse and I have been talking about it and I think we’re ready to wean Ian off of it. I think the biggest problem we’re going to have is his night awakenings. Truthfully, he should be sleeping through the night, but when I can’t get him to calm down at 3am, nursing helps. Also, whenever I’ve tried giving him a bottle during the day, he doesn’t like it. He wants mama instead. He doesn’t fight the bottle at night. He knows he gets that one, but the ones during the days are different. I think Jesse will agree with this, but we’ll go until our anniversary. Then Ian is getting off of the breast milk and will be sticking to the Gerber foods and formula.

I want to go back to work. Not full time or anything big, but just something that’ll get me out of the house for a couple of hours a week. I’m thinking of getting a job at a retail shop during the weekends for the holiday season. I love being home with Ian, but I want to get out (plus the additional money would be nice). The biggest obstacle to this is day care. We can’t afford it, so we’re going to have to get it so Jesse can take care of Ian for eight hours straight. It takes a lot of patience and realizing that what you want to do isn’t a priority when watching Ian; and Jesse hasn’t accepted that yet. He’s been able to watch Ian for short spans of time, but if watching him gets in the way of him doing something he wants, he starts to lose patience. He’s always had me to fall back on and he won’t if I’m at work. We’re going to try an experiment where Jesse gets Ian for eight hours and I’ll be in the office the entire time just in case. Hopefully Jesse will be able to do it, but I have my doubts (especially considering we’ll have to find time to do it and I know Jesse has things he wants to do). He may surprise me, but I know him. He hasn’t had to get Ian to take a nap or try to figure out what is wrong or any of the small things. There have been a couple of times where I was able to rock Ian to sleep, but it wasn’t a quick 2 minute job. It took a good 10 minutes or longer and it required a lot of patience. Either way, this is a decision I can’t make on my own and I’m not expecting it to go the way I want. We’ll see what happens though.

We did it again. Last year we went camping at Orchard Beach State Park in Manistee and this year we went back for another round. Brad and Erin were unable to join us this year, however, Tim and Kathie came up instead. The weekend wasn’t quite like last year, but when you mix up the crowd, that tends to happen. The weather was really great all weekend. Much better than last year. It rained on the four hour car ride to the west side of the state, but it didn’t rain again until we were taking the tents down this morning. And even then, it really didn’t rain, just hiccuped a little.

Saturday night we went to Little River Casino and I actually made money. Well, sorta. Jesse and I each took in $10 and that is what we used to gamble with. I ended up leaving with $32. That’s not bad. Jesse didn’t do so hot, but he made up for it Sunday when we went back and I ended up losing all $10 I went in with and he came out with $14. Yeah Jesse!

We didn’t check it out last year, but we did get down to the Port City Street Fair that goes on during this same weekend. There was a bunch of arts and craft tables, some live music, and a bunch of food. At one end of the street, there was a car show going on, but I think we got to it towards the end. Most of the cars were gone when we went to check them out.

We definitely learned from our mistakes last year. We didn’t do community snack foods and I don’t think we spent that much on food. Beth and Jordan brought a lot of food with them, so there really wasn’t much for us to go shopping for. We didn’t go through anywhere near the amount of wood we did last year. Granted, it was warmer this year (by a lot), so there really wasn’t the need for a continuous fire. Don’t get me wrong, we had one, it just wasn’t roaring.

We ended up getting a new tent this year. After last year’s fiasco with the rain and the leaky tent, Jesse and I ended up with a six-person Coleman tent. It was a really nice tent, but there was one thing we were sorely lacking….an air mattress. That’s next year’s purchase. We have a decent tent now, we just need to fix the sleeping arrangements.

I think that’s about it. Jesse and I have already decided that we need to take Ian camping next spring (no he didn’t go with us this weekend, he spent it with grandma). I’m trying to convince Jesse that we should go for the Lilac Festival in Mackinaw Island in June. We’ll see if I can. Oh yeah, the pictures for this weekend are here. So enjoy.